Smol ACU Adjustment

i realize my tongue slipped earlier and i said mass storage instead of e-storage. apologies. My suggestion, to be clear, would only have to do with e-storage

@thomashiatt I like your proposal of a speed range nerf for the commander a lot more than FTX's because it's less drastic, and I think it goes well with the recent speed buff to T2 land. But the difference in range between a t2 pd and a guncom is the distance between t2 pds that you need in order to creep with little concern. Is there anything we could change to prevent pd creep from becoming too cheap, relative to what it is now? it would also warrant a proportional nerf to turning speed for t2 range bots, otherwise they could kite too easily, right?

@phong said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

I like your proposal of a speed nerf for the commander

Range nerf for ACU, or speed nerf for T1 land.

I haven't seen a range bot used at all since whenever they were last nerfed, so I'm not really worried about them. They were previously pretty useless against a gun ACU, so if they become more usable that would be good. I don't know anything about PD creep, it doesn't happen to me and I don't really play team games. I imagine that using T2 MMLs to counter T2 PD is just another thing that makes the T2 stage more important.

@ftxcommando this hand-waving away of gun vs t2 is a bit sus, especially in light of the forum guidelines. There is currently a small window where a guncom can prevent a t2 com from establishing a base at all, and since pd creep is a thing, it can be an all-or-nothing sort of fight. I'm not convinced that halving the guncom's damage doesn't affect this tenuous relationship between the two upgrades. If this window of time were to become too small or dissapear, that might be an auto-lose for the guncom. by how much do you suppose t2 build suite should be nerfed to keep this balance or change it for the better ?

@thomashiatt so a guncom would need to invest into t2 land as well before he can contest a t2 com's emergence and creep onto the map? That's one way of countering t2 pd creep, probably the optimal one given enough space to retreat and prepare. But if "enough space" is too much, like on some 4v4 or even 3v3 10x10 maps, you might be forced to take it on with t1 land or sacrifice too much map control and time. So what do you think the new range should be?

Removing auto OC will basically only hit low rated player who already don't use their ACU or don't have the apm/concentration to micro it much.

For me OC is a medium skill floor and high skill cap to know when to use it and to micro ACU to get it work, auto-OC just bring it down in level for lower rated player to use it.

It's like the mass fab autoturn off option, you can technically have high apm and skill floor to turn them on and off but even high rated player didn't do it. It was either just stall or build more power than needed to ensure no stall. The autoturn off just lowered it skill floor for everyone to help with it.

Maybe have the Auto OC deal a fixed dmg but when you use it manually it does the increase dmg so that way skill floor stay low but skill cap still exist.

See with JIP if doable (make auto OC only use the base 5000E while the manual OC use max able to do max dmg)

@phong said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

@thomashiatt so a guncom would need to invest into t2 land as well before he can contest a t2 com's emergence and creep onto the map? That's one way of countering t2 pd creep, probably the optimal one given enough space to retreat and prepare. But if "enough space" is too much, like on some 4v4 or even 3v3 10x10 maps, you might be forced to take it on with t1 land or sacrifice too much map control and time. So what do you think the new range should be?

I don't know, I only play 1v1 and don't have problems with PD creep. I don't know any exact numbers either, that's the balance team's job. If T2 HQ is made a little cheaper, I'd expect you can hold off a PD creep with t1 arty, gun acu, air, or whatever in time to get some MML out.

@brannou said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Removing auto OC will basically only hit low rated player who already don't use their ACU or don't have the apm/concentration to micro it much.

For me OC is a medium skill floor and high skill cap to know when to use it and to micro ACU to get it work, auto-OC just bring it down in level for lower rated player to use it.

It's like the mass fab autoturn off option, you can technically have high apm and skill floor to turn them on and off but even high rated player didn't do it. It was either just stall or build more power than needed to ensure no stall. The autoturn off just lowered it skill floor for everyone to help with it.

Maybe have the Auto OC deal a fixed dmg but when you use it manually it does the increase dmg so that way skill floor stay low but skill cap still exist.

See with JIP if doable (make auto OC only use the base 5000E while the manual OC use max able to do max dmg)

The difference is using OC is fun and should be encouraged as a micro mechanic, mass fab toggling is not.

@phong said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

@ftxcommando this hand-waving away of gun vs t2 is a bit sus, especially in light of the forum guidelines. There is currently a small window where a guncom can prevent a t2 com from establishing a base at all, and since pd creep is a thing, it can be an all-or-nothing sort of fight. I'm not convinced that halving the guncom's damage doesn't affect this tenuous relationship between the two upgrades. If this window of time were to become too small or dissapear, that might be an auto-lose for the guncom. by how much do you suppose t2 build suite should be nerfed to keep this balance or change it for the better ?

Each PD is like 540 mass. You need 1000 mass in pd + 800 mass in upgrade to beat an 800 mass gun equivalent upgrade. The gun player should have accounted for the t2 transition and began playing for his own t2 transition either via ACU or factory. With the low strength of the t2 acu in terms of actual damage, you can either break the pd with mmls (basically all the dps), use range bots (low risk of dying), or just properly spread t2 tanks so oc can hit max 1 at a time.

Honestly I just don’t consider t2 acu a big problem in games because it costs mass to do anything productive. That is then mass you can interact with that also doesn’t end games by itself. A gun acu is something that you pay one cost for, gets like perpetual free value, and the only real solution to it is ending the game.

You don’t see t2 Aeon ACU when gun vs t2 is a consideration. You don’t see t2 Cyb ACU when t2 vs gun is a consideration. You see it with UEF and Phim cuz they can go both so any danger can be responded with a 15 second pause to rush the gun upgrade if needed.

Gun needs more energy so some of that mass is funded by 5+ fewer pgens you need to build. I also remember that back when T2 gave more health and regen it was considered an autowin against gun. Nerfing ACU gun does risk bringing this issue back.

Random thought from skimming this - what if we took away the AOE of oc when you don’t have gun upgrade? It comes back as normal with gun upgrade.

@exselsior said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Random thought from skimming this - what if we took away the AOE of oc when you don’t have gun upgrade? It comes back as normal with gun upgrade.

So my problem with that basically comes down to it not shifting meta hard enough. I read it and I basically see games playing out with gun ACU being mandatory for pushes, when it kinda already is.

Another thing is that it encourages cancer gameplay early on. Take something like sentons with blocking ACUs with units, that sort of gameplay is heavily rewarded with such a change. IMO, a general nerf to ACU damage leads to a healthier early game because you have less volatile ACU v ACU exchange and the ACU is still a large stop gap against dumb cheese all ins while still rewarding a decent meatshield mass investment so that the enemy cant simply surround you with tanks spread far enough apart to not really care about the OC.

@exselsior

The problem with OC is that it can completely invalidate T2 units up to a certain threshold. The AOE is what makes OC good against T1, the pure damage is what makes it good against T2. So you're mostly nerfing OC against T1 and not changing it vs T2.

@mazornoob said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Gun needs more energy so some of that mass is funded by 5+ fewer pgens you need to build. I also remember that back when T2 gave more health and regen it was considered an autowin against gun. Nerfing ACU gun does risk bringing this issue back.

You can just swap the cost of gun and t2. There are so many ways to make t2 fine. And honestly, the whole crux of my point is that t2 ACUs ironically promote more dynamism in teamgames that gun does because they provide mass concentration that can be interacted with to lower the efficiency of the enemy. What am I supposed to do against a gun acu? Either kill it (10k+ investment as stated), make it myself (stagnate the game), or kill all enemy e storage(i guess?).

I would literally prefer having t2 acus be a dominant meta in teamgames. That isn’t the point of this post, that’s about how inherently problematic the efficiency of ACU is. But there are a ton of slight nerfs to give t2 ACU to make it equate to this nerfed gun since 80% of the value still comes from OC + range combo.

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

The difference is using OC is fun and should be encouraged as a micro mechanic, mass fab toggling is not.

OC is fun true, but I don't care if it's automatic or not. This is your opinion.
I like FaF because it is more macro heavy than other games. Strategy over APM. And I have already enough to micro. To be honest, it would probable be a nightmare for me to give my ACU all 4-5 seconds an OC order.
I can totally see that you like the skill expression and competition, but as an old casual player you would make the game stressful for me and competing to the starcraft kids a nightmare - I remember I played Warcraft III 20 years ago with ~160 APM...
When I watch FaF and exclude people like farms I see mostly people which can't cross the 1.5k border. Most players are below.
I seriously think removing or nerfing auto OC is a false direction - OC in general is an other thing.
PS: @FtXCommando this suggestion may hit the game and community but your latest approaches I really like. Creative, disruptive, out of the box thinking.

With a single Energy storage, Auto-Overcharge is like an extra attack with quite a bit of kick. Perhaps change the scale which energy storage boosts the power of Overcharge damage? Also, is there a chart somewhere that displays the current energy storage/energy use of Overcharge?

Nerfing the ACU would be the healthiest change to the early and mid game ever seen, not even joking.

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

why are you guys like 1200 if u can manual oc spam while doing proper base management i cant do that

im 1200 and auto oc is my best friend:P i manually oc ed when i was lower rank, but the possibility to do base stuff (funneling all the reclaim that the oc gun com lets behind e.g.) made me just turn on auto. i know i should do it manually to be a better player, but there are much bigger problems in my gameplay befor i fix this.

maybe you can make the com stop walking for a little longer wih auto oc, bcs i have the feeling that most times its no disandvantage to use auto oc or to make a higher "reload" time, so you have to use it more strategic and manual oc would have a much higher worth, bcs you dont want to risk that your com blasts away a single t1 maa when there is no air around.

Well for auto-oc to exist it would basically need to be something at around the 1k rating where you start to consider the trade-offs on it being not worth it. It should effectively be worthless at the 1500+ level. I have no idea what the penalties should be to make those the intended rating ranges for it.

Make it always pick the target that takes the longest time to rotate the turret?